By mustang6560 on 2/23/12

Luke Donald's title defense at the World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship ended abruptly yesterday with a 5&4 loss to Ernie Els.

"I just didn’t play very well," Donald said. "I struggled. I gave away too many holes and made too many mistakes. You can’t do that in match play against anyone, let alone Ernie."

It's only the third time in the history of the event that the number one overall seed lost in the first round. The other two players with that distinction include former world number one Tiger Woods and Steve Stricker. Tiger lost to Peter O'Malley in 2002 and Steve lost to Ross McGowan most recently in 2010.

The world number one was not the only higher seed to be taken out. In fact, 15 of the 32 matches were won by the higher seed, which includes one 16 (Els), two 15 seeds (Robert Rock defeated Adam Scott 1up and Matteo Manassero defeated Webb Simpson 3&2) and two 14 seeds (Y.E. Yang defeated Graeme McDowell 2&1 and Ryo Ishikawa defeated Bill Haas 1up).

The second round of the Accenture Match Play is set to start at 10:25 AM CST. You can follow some of the action through the PGATour.com's LIVE@ video service starting at 11:30 AM CST.

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Flickr, Keith Allison

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